


No Man's Land

by lit103



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 18:30:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1176441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lit103/pseuds/lit103
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I can be spontaneous," Spock says. "In fact, might I suggest—"</p><p>"<i>No,</i>" Kirk says. "That may have worked last week, but it is not going to work again. I know what you're up to, and frankly I am very surprised that Dr. McCoy keeps instructional pamphlets in his office that tell you how to do <i>that</i>."</p><p>"I did not learn that from an instructional pamphlet," Spock says with dignity. "As you may well remember, there was a certain amount of trial and error involved."</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Man's Land

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if this is TOS or AOS! I think they act more AOS but it could go either way to be honest. Either way they're very young.

There are times when Kirk doesn’t think this is going to work at all.

And then there are times when he thinks not that it _is_ , necessarily, but that it just has to, because there’s no way he’s giving this up.

It's only been three weeks, but he’s learned approximately seventeen new things about Spock already. Most, inevitably, are unexpected, but some are things that really don't surprise Kirk at all, like the fact that one of Spock's favorite things to do turns out to be pointing out the numerous inaccuracies in the outdated holomercials Kirk checked out of the library because he's pretty sure Spock doesn't mean to, but sometimes he makes Kirk feel really stupid. He manages to hide them from Spock for a week, watching them whenever he has time between things he has to be doing, which honestly isn't that often, but it turns out that it’s really hard to absorb information in five-minute chunks so he has to keep starting the one he’s on over, and then he loses that one and has to start another, and then Spock walks in on him watching that one before Kirk can turn it off. "The Oughtred exclusion principle," the bland holomercial voice is saying, "states that no two identical photons can—"

"Jeez, Spock, don't you knock?" Kirk snaps, switching off the computer. "What are you doing here anyway, I thought you were on the bridge."

"85% of this section of the quadrant has been mapped under my personal supervision and without incident, Captain," Spock says. "I believe Mr. Sulu to be eminently capable of overseeing an afternoon's worth of the remaining 15% himself."

"Ha," he says. "Admit it, Spock. You hate starmapping just as much as everybody else."

"The mapping of unexplored star systems," Spock says, even more schoolmarmishly than usual, "is an important component of the mission of this—"

"Yeah, yeah," Kirk says. "It's boring. You know it, I know it. Why else do you think I delegated it to you?"

"It seems that you delegated it to me," Spock says, "in order to watch a holomercial entitled—" Kirk makes a grab for the cartridge that Spock just ejected, but it's too late "— _Quantum Mechanics for_ —"

"Give that back," Kirk says. "That's an order."

Spock gives him a stern look, but hands it over. Kirk stuffs it into a drawer. "Thank you," he says. "Status report, Mr. Spock, if you please."

"All systems normal, Captain," Spock says, straightening his back and placing his hands behind it. Kirk loves it when he does that. He reminds himself to ask Spock for status reports more often. "Starmapping of the Talos system should be complete in approximately 4.6 days, at which time we will proceed on schedule to Rigel VI for refueling."

"Very good, thank you, Mr. Spock," Kirk says. Spock continues to stand there, back very straight, like he's waiting.

Ha, Kirk thinks. Gotcha.

"Is there anything else, Mr. Spock?" he says.

"No, Captain," Spock says, after a very brief pause. "However—"

This is it, Kirk thinks. He's finally going to do it, he's going to stay without making me ask—

"—I do feel that it is incumbent upon me to point out that the holomercial you are watching is out of date, Captain," Spock says. "The Oughtred exclusion principle was disproven in the year 2243 by a man named BenDavid—"

"Spock, oh my god," Kirk says loudly.

"Captain?" Spock says.

"Just—stop talking and come here," Kirk says.

*

Kirk had no idea he was falling asleep afterwards; he wakes up, disoriented, to the sound of the holomercial narrator's bland voice. Spock (whose endocrine system, like that of all Vulcans, doesn't produce prolactin—new thing like number seven that Kirk’s learned) is sitting up very straight on the edge of the bed, watching intently. Kirk figures listening to incorrect information will be such a torment to him that he'll have to turn it off eventually, but Spock, it turns out, seems to enjoy pausing the holomercial every few seconds and explaining its inaccuracies to Kirk in great detail. Kirk, for his part, actually starts to learn something. When they finish all the holomercials, Spock starts bringing his treasured hard copy scientific journals into Kirk's quarters to read and then leaving them lying around. The first time he walks in on Kirk reading one, he raises an eyebrow but doesn't say a word.

*

The Enterprise has been starmapping for almost a month. It's mostly awful—Kirk knows it, the crew knows it, and Kirk _knows_ Spock knows it—but Kirk can’t deny it’s had its benefits. He’s pretty sure that this... this _thing_ with Spock only started not just because they were in the advanced stages of boredom but because the starmapping meant that there was finally time for it to happen. It almost _did_ happen like five times before it actually did, but there was always something to get in the way, like that time on Regulus V right before the eel-bird attack, and that time they'd been trapped in the shuttle alone for seven hours and Spock had come over to make another frankly unnecessary adjustment to Kirk's viewscreen, kneeling next to Kirk's chair and leaning across him for at least the fifth time, and Kirk, who just about couldn’t take it anymore, opened his mouth to say "We're in the middle of a fog bank, Spock, there's nothing to _see_ ," but all that came out was this weird strangled croaking noise and Spock turned his head really fast so their faces were like inches apart and Kirk knew with horrible clarity that he was about to do something so so stupid, then the shuttle hit a patch of turbulence so violent that it knocked Spock sideways and made Kirk almost fall out of his chair and when Spock picked himself up off the floor he went and sat on the other side of the shuttle and avoided eye contact with Kirk for the next three hours until Scotty finally found them.

But then they reached the Talos system and settled in to start mapping and everybody could relax. A whole bunch of people took personal days—except for Spock, obviously, who Kirk is pretty sure has never taken a personal day in his life, and who insists on disrupting the ones that Kirk has no problem at all with taking by barging into his quarters at all hours to give Kirk unasked-for updates on things like the new theory he has about the unclassified lifeform that looked kind of like a cross between a piece of sausage pizza and a shag rug that they found on Ivernia II last month.

Spock spends four days doing everything on his epically long Priority 2 to-do list. Then finally one night he ends up in Kirk’s quarters, where he for some reason needs to be to check the calculations for the minor modifications he’s making to the life support system, which takes way longer than he thought it would, apparently. Kirk, who may or may not have cracked open a beer when Spock started, thinking he’d have time for just one, is just lying in bed sleepily watching him work when Spock lays down his tablet with what Kirk’s sure is satisfaction, crosses off the last item on his list, and turns around.

The room is very quiet. Kirk is suddenly all the way awake and very aware of the three empty beer bottles on the table by his bed—three of the last case he smuggled onto the ship from earth; of the clock reading 3:23 AM; of the look on Spock’s face; of the fact that finally, _finally_ , there’s nothing getting in their way.

*

For a while, in the first few weeks, Kirk’s pretty sure it isn’t going to work after all. He doesn’t have any human/Vulcan relationships to compare it to, but they haven’t been, you know, whatever they are for very long and he’s pretty sure they’re fighting more than normal. Kirk knew it wasn’t necessarily going to be easy. He’s been trying. He spent like three hours last week installing sensors in the door that recognize Spock and automatically raise the temperature when he enters the room. But it’s not hard to feel like _Spock’s_ the one who should be trying, and on the surface of it he just isn’t. Maybe he is, Kirk thinks, because he really, _really_ wants this not to not work out. Maybe the Vulcan thing just makes it hard for me to tell.

But then one day Kirk calls Spock the most frustrating person he’s ever met in his life and comes into his quarters the next day to find Spock—who, despite Kirk’s insistence on secrecy, spends like three quarters of his free time there these days—sitting at his computer with the dictionary cartridge inserted and Spock gets called to the bridge before he can remove it and when Kirk next turns on his computer there, right on the screen, is the word "frustration" followed by a definition and Kirk imagines Spock sitting there, forehead wrinkled almost imperceptibly, lips maybe moving as he reads the words—"a feeling of anger or annoyance"—which, Kirk thinks, wanting to laugh, someone needs to get the Enterprise a human-Vulcan dictionary stat because that definition is no help at _all_.

This is the kind of thing they fight about all the time. Kirk will say something about how something made him feel and Spock just looks at him like he’s waiting for Kirk to continue, like what he's just said was a prelude to what he’s _actually_ going to say and then all of a sudden Spock starts saying, enunciating carefully, "I understand how you feel," which freaks Kirk out way more than the blank, expectant stares, and he ignores it the first few times but then once when he's really mad yells "No you _don’t_ " and Spock opens his mouth to argue but then just closes it again like he knows Kirk is right.

And then a few days later, with two more days of starmapping to go, Kirk is in Spock's quarters looking for his communicator which he’s pretty sure he left in there the other night and finds a pamphlet entitled "I Feel You: A Field Guide to Successful Communication" lying open on Spock's desk and, sure enough, there’s "I understand how you feel" in the Listening section and seeing it—with a little pink flag marking the page—makes Kirk feel guilty and protective and a lot of other things all at once. Spock stops saying he understands how Kirk feels, and the next time they fight Kirk yells something like "Why are you standing there staring at me without blinking like that it makes me feel like you’re not even listening" and Spock looks at him and says very seriously "When I stare at you without blinking like that it makes you feel like I am not even listening" and Kirk goes " _Yes_ , thank you, that's exactly what I—" and then he goes "Wait."

Spock just stands there, waiting. Kirk narrows his eyes at him.

"You got that from that communication pamphlet, didn't you," he says accusatorially.

"How do you know about that pamphlet," Spock says.

"I saw it on your desk when I was looking for that Vulcan Science Academy Quarterly you were telling me about last week," Kirk says defensively. "Where did you get that thing, anyway?"

"Dr. McCoy's office," Spock says.

"What!" Kirk yells. "You didn't tell him it was because of— _you_ know? Did you?"

Spock rolls his eyes. (It makes Kirk want to point gleefully at him and say ha, you _do_ do that, but he's pretty sure if he calls too much attention to it Spock will stop doing it and he definitely doesn't want that.) "No," Spock says, speaking in the rapid and very precise way that means he's pissed. "I did not tell him that it was because I am secretly involved in a romantic relationship with you and given that this is my first such relationship with a human I have no standard against which to measure it and given your insistence on secrecy there is no one I can ask for advice. I did not tell Dr. McCoy this because it is not the primary reason I took the pamphlet from his office. I did so because I interact with anywhere between ten and twenty-five humans in a given day, the majority of whom experience emotions including, but certainly not limited to, the desire to feel that I hear and understand them. And furthermore I would like to inform you that repeating what they have just said back to them word for word to demonstrate that I am listening has worked on several members of the crew so far and if it is not effective on you that only serves to strengthen my hypothesis that you are the most confusing person I have ever met."

" _I'm_ confusing?" Kirk says. "And who exactly have you been practicing this on?"

"Lieutenant Koenig, the warp core engineer from Deltron V," Spock says at once. "Dr. McCoy's new assistant, the one with the hair that I like. Yeoman—"

"Oh my god, stop, stop," Kirk says. "You were supposed to say no one, Jim, no one but you, it's only ever all been for you—"

"It has only ever all been for—" Spock repeats, kind of speculatively, like he's testing out the words.

"Well now you're only saying that because I told you to," Kirk says. "You have to do it spontaneously."

"I can be spontaneous," Spock says. "In fact, might I suggest—"

" _No_ ," Kirk says. "That may have worked last week, but it is not going to work again. I know what you're up to, and frankly I am very surprised that Dr. McCoy keeps instructional pamphlets in his office that tell you how to do _that_."

"I did not learn that from an instructional pamphlet," Spock says with dignity. "As you may well remember, there was a certain amount of trial and error involved."

"Spock," Kirk says, "That is so not the point. The _point_ is that—oh my god, I have no idea what the point is. Why are we fighting?”

“I am... not certain,” says Spock, and Kirk says “Oh no wait, I remember, it was something about how even the most rudimentary android on this ship can repeat what I’m saying back to me but that definitely doesn’t mean it _underst_ —”

“Captain,” Spock says, and Kirk realizes, not for the first time, just how patient he is, even if he’d be insulted by Kirk calling it patience. “I have spent only 30% of my life in close proximity with humans. There are still a number of earth emotions that I do not understand. But I assure you that I am trying.”

Kirk remembers the little pink flags sticking out of Spock’s pamphlet. He’d annotated it and gone over it with two different colors of highlighter. It’s kind of hard to meet Spock’s eyes all of a sudden, so Kirk looks at his desk. He can see those stupid holomercials, now weeks overdue, in the bottom of a half-open drawer—and on top of it, a stack of Vulcan Science Academy Quarterlies, stacked up way more neatly than they’d been when he left the room that morning. He’s pretty sure Spock has taken to coming in here and straightening up when he’s out.

“Spock,” he says. “Spock, it’s okay. I know you are.”

*

Things proceed both like nothing Kirk ever could have imagined and kind of exactly how he might have expected them to, had he been foolhardy enough to have expectations about something like this. McCoy should have them both relieved from duty on grounds of insanity. At the very least this has to be wildly inappropriate, he thinks for what feels like the millionth time, when Spock comes up behind him in the chair two days later and says "Captain" in what's probably, the rational part of Kirk thinks, exactly the same tone of voice he's always used and always will use when he says that word but what's _definitely_ , the irrational part of Kirk—the part that seems to have completely taken over at this point—insists is the Vulcan equivalent of sultry enough to alert the entire bridge to what's going on. He looks around. Nobody seems to be paying any attention.

"Yes, Mr. Spock," he says.

"Starmapping of the Talos system complete, Captain," Spock says. "Uploading star charts to Command Central now."

"Thank you, Mr. Spock," Kirk says. "Mr. Sulu, plot a course for Rigel VI."

"Already plotted, sir. Laying in," says Sulu, grinning. And maybe it's just the relief that everyone's feeling now that this stupid starmapping is over, but you know what, Kirk thinks, as he says “Ahead warp factor five, Mr. Sulu,” and Sulu says “Warp factor five, sir,” and the Enterprise hums to life all around them, he’s pretty sure everything might just work out okay after all.

End


End file.
